Hi, in need of some advice around a contract. Ink summaries below what the issue is / what I've been living through.
Signed a contract with a builder in feb 22 for a relatively straight forward extension. All planning permission approved etc.
should have started mid July, for 12-15 weeks.
July comes, nobody arrives, moved to end of July.
This goes on until September when it finally kicks off.
All goes well at first, except their working hours are short (9-3) and they never worked a Friday.
I wasn't too bothered at this stage and we were on good terms.
I had an email saying prices had gone up by 8% after about 4 weeks (circa 7k additional cost) we were happy to Suck this up as recognise the cost of everything has gone up in the last 12 months since original quote.
Then in October we didn't see them for 2 weeks. I called a meeting with builder - and basically gave him feedback around communication, asked for him to talk to us about when they will be here etc as was leaving the door open incase they turned up when I was out at work and this wasn't ideal.
He promised working weekends to catch up, committed to sorting out his team and ensuring they would be done by Xmas.
Then the cold spell came in December and they left our house with a very thin board on one of the windows, not insulated, it was Freezing as no roof on part of the house too.
Nightmare as we also have 2 young children.
We're now nearly at the end of feb and it's still not done. We've called a meeting with the builder tomorrow as I'm just at breaking point with it.
The house is cold, filthy, constant flow of different tradesmen in and out with no notice.
We have paid up to date (which I know in hindsight I shouldn't have) but I just don't want any drama - however tomorrow I plan on serving him his arse on a plate for the 6 months they have let us live through and the stress and living conditions that he clearly doesn't give a shit about.
We have a temp roof over our house which is pissing off the neighbours (understandable) and we're now getting complaints as we told them it would be up for 3-4 months not 6-7.
So I guess my question is does anybody have any experience of confronting builders around their work / failure to adhere to a contract?
At the moment we still need our roof tiling, bathroom fitting, plastering, doors hanging etc.
He alluded a couple of weeks ago to costs going up again and I am just not confident that he has fulfilled his part of the contract - but want to make sure I'm armed with knowledge before I tackle that conversation- any experience in this area or shares would be appreciated. I feel like we've been so reasonable and patient but I really want my message to land with him tomorrow